


On Wants and Needs

by alien_turnip



Series: Deliberation [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, But the rest is mostly Justice being lost and miserable in general, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Identity Issues, In the Western Approach to top, M/M, Oh and Justice/Hawke if you squint, Stream of Consciousness, With a tiiiiiny hint of Handers fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:22:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29633898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alien_turnip/pseuds/alien_turnip
Summary: All for the body’s wants and needs. Justice continued his walk to Adamant, while bearing the consequences of being alive.The second part of my "Anders dies, Justice lives" AU, set during the later half of Inquisition.
Relationships: Anders & Justice (Dragon Age), Anders/Male Hawke, Hawke & Justice (Dragon Age)
Series: Deliberation [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2173116
Kudos: 6





	On Wants and Needs

**Author's Note:**

> This work is a direct continuation of the prologue, [On the End and Beginning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29579592).

....

His body had stopped glowing and cracking with lyrium. He hated it even more.

Justice had been walking for some time, first away from the carnage, then forward to where Adamant Fortress was headed. His feet sank ever so slightly in the soft sand with every step he made, and he dragged his body uphill with great efforts; the ground shrank, shifted, giving way for his boots with a silent groan before pushing him back to the surface. He stumbled many times, his mind not quite catching up with the way his body was supposed to move, while his backpack jolted and disrupted his balance every once in a while.

Belatedly, Justice realized he had never really used their shared body for anything other than fighting and, during late nights in the clinic (back when Kirkwall had not gone up in flames), writing their manifesto. Each of those times his mind had been driven and focused, if not to fight for a cause, to avenge a wrong, then to protect Anders.

As it was, he tried to learn through trials and errors.

The desert was dry and freezing cold under the blue light of Satina, sharp winds cutting into his skin where his clothes were torn and shredded. The world was silent and empty, broken ruins and slanted rocks, with only sand to fill his boots and dry air his lungs, yet he felt assaulted by the cold against his skin and an indescribable weight in the pit of his stomach. How had Anders put up with this? How had Justice not gotten used to these… these sensations? Six years in the mortal world, and once again everything felt foreign, uncanny, as if he was once again thrown into a new realm, glass vase crashing against a wall, with only fallible flesh and bones to glue him back together. Someone else’s. Not his. Wrong. This was all wrong.

At some point his knees buckled, and he barely had time to brace his arms before falling face-first on the ground. _“Knickerweasels,”_ Anders would have cursed, but it was just a phantom urge that soon faded into a distant memory in Justice’s mind. Justice was not Anders, not anymore. He did not find the need to blow his frustration nor did he want to laugh at his own misery, so he did the only thing he had left to do: he tried to get up. His legs shook when he attempted to shift his weight, and he could hear a loud rumble from his belly.

“… Must be hunger,” he deduced unhelpfully. His voice croaked as he spoke, and the itch in the back of his throat used the opportunity to make itself known with intensity. _Maybe thirst, too._ It was much easier when Anders was here to name what they felt.

The middle of the desert was no place to feel hunger or thirst, however, this much he knew. Justice dragged himself up and toward a cluster of stone bricks, giant, square-cut blocks lying one atop another in makeshift wall structures. He leaned against one side, a trembling hand rummaging through his backpack (hastily packed, they hadn’t had much time to prepare) to check for remaining rations. Anders’ waterskin hung right next to his belt pouch, half-empty, and he struggled to work through the knots before untangling it from the hanger.

The food, the water, none of them had been his. He had not needed them. Justice had been the one to drive away Anders’ hunger and thirst, to quell his fatigue and temper the Taint in his blood using nothing but his sheer will. Yet now… no matter how hard he tried to will them away, the feelings clung on stubbornly, eating at him and threatening to shut down his body.

Then there was the cold. A chill that numbed his exposed fingers, at the same time stabbing into them like a thousand pinpricks. _The body can last for days without food and water, but the cold will kill fast,_ Anders’ memories supplied, from a not-so-distant winter when they worried over the refugees in Darktown.

For a moment, it felt as if Anders was still here, merely dormant from exertion. Yet Justice was Justice and he could not lie for the sake of comfort, even to himself.

He hated to think about Anders in the past, but past was all there was now, decades of memories indiscernible from Justice’s own. The thought did nothing for the missing presence in his head.

“What have you done, Anders? What have I done?” Justice murmured. He took a long sip from the waterskin; the water was cool, a blessed comfort for his parched throat but not for the chill that had been settling in his bones. He stood wearily, gripping on the stones to keep himself steady.

 _Fire. I need—I need fire. And—and somewhere to stay away from the wind_ , he thought as though through a daze.

From his vantage point, he could see the sand stretching into a slope, then into a pathway strewn with abandoned wooden carts and tattered banners of all kinds. It led to the mouth of a cave, not too far away from where he stood. 

A tired hundred steps closer revealed not a living soul around, and Justice entered the cave entrance, a small wisp conjured to light up the narrow passage.

There was a small chamber at the end of the tunnel: empty torch hangers attached to the stone walls, opened barrels and chests stacked in a corner next to a wooden table, on which sprawled various broken trinkets, junks, and torn parchments.

Justice ran a hand through the various objects and sighed, as jumbled emotions and blurred memories flashed in his mind. At least these are familiar, traces of feelings lingering in these inanimate things even after the people living them were long gone. Many travelers had taken shelter in this place, people of all races, from traders to scholars, mages to Chantry priests, bandits to Grey Wardens. They blended into a collage of sound and images, faces and voices not quite discernible from one another:

_A tavern song, sung in fleeting solidarity._

_Clashes of steel blades and startled screams, from a sudden ambush._

_A warm dinner. A starving night._

_Journal entries penned in frustrated despair. Golden coins hitting the bottom of a chest, blended with raucous laughter._

They all had left at the end, and memories were just that, memories. They washed through his mind then bled away, as quick as they’d come, leaving a gaping hole in Justice’s head. 

He jerked his hand away at the sudden reminder. The loud growling in his belly made itself known again.

He exhaled, then spoke to the quiet space. “Back to the task at hand.” There was no one else to agree or protest with, so he did just that. A fire. Wood from the empty barrels could be fuel. Then the food, lest the body break down. Then he could go find Hawke.

One thing at a time. He could not lose control.

As Justice finally sat cross-legged in the orange glow of a crackling fire, his posture awkward and rigid, he tore open a pack of dried meat and silently chewed, his mind focusing on how the rough texture dug uncomfortably against the cave of his mouth. But it was food, and it tasted something, so he kept on eating.

All for the body’s wants and needs. He had learned that, if anything.

.

_“You can’t just ‘deal with’ hunger and thirst by ignoring it, it’s simply not how us mortals work!” Hawke chastised him with a steaming food basket pushed into his private space, while Justice summoned his spirit energy to block his stomach from rumbling at the smell._

_He forced his eyes to focus on the parchment through the blue glaze of his eyes, scribbling out blocky letters on the rough surface. The small candle on his right flickered, a feeble source of light under the Darktown night._ Focus. Andraste suffered at the hands of Magisters. Thus, she feared the influence of—

_“Justice.” A large hand blocked his quill, smearing over the spots of wet ink. Justice scowled._

_“I am not of mortal men, and this is none of your concern.”_

_“You might not have realized it, but the body you’re riding in_ is _one. Who happens to be the love of my life, by the way. So yes, it_ is _my concern,” Hawke flashed him a warm smile, pretending to be at ease, but Justice knew better. He saw the way Hawke’s blue eyes darted away just slightly before shifting back. No one in their ragtag circle of allies had ever been at ease when Justice was around. Even if Hawke was wearing no armor, going with only a simple tunic and tight-fitting pants, showing off the muscles of his forearms and the well-defined curves of his legs which were perched_ just _the right angle on the edge of the table—_

No, focus, _he scolded his other half into quietude._ I can deal with this.

_“I can deal with it,” he told Hawke just so. “Hunger and thirst are but weaknesses of the mind, caving into carnal desires of the fallible body. Those with weaker constitution have direr needs for food, and Anders’ body was made stronger for what we are. We would not take it and deny others their chances.”_

_“… Well, that would explain where the_ **other** _baskets I sent you went to.”_

_“They went where they were needed,” Justice replied simply, pushing the one on this table away. He could smell the sugary scents of fruit pies and a rich blend of stew, the strong spices suggesting that it was Orana’s Tevinter recipe; as he touched it, images of a warm kitchen flashed through his mind, laced with a lovely tune from a foreign language. The elven maid did like to hum to herself as she worked._

_Hawke’s other arm reached out to block the basket’s way, his mouth pursing, thick brows furrowed._

_“Tell you what, Justice, you might be wrong here,” Hawke leaned across the table. Justice should have worried that the table would break if it had to bear more of the man’s massive weight, but his mind was instead pulled toward Hawke’s blatant accusation. What did he know about Justice, what did he know about them?_

_… Yet it was Hawke who had accepted to help them with Karl without even a question, simply because he thought it the right thing to do. It was him who had supported their cause, read their manifesto, who had brought them up when they had been wracked with guilt from their slip of control. It was him who had soothed Anders’ pains when Justice could not, who had given Anders the comfort of touch and conversation when Justice’s thoughts could not reach Anders the way they wanted to. Justice offered Anders a cause, but Hawke offered him his heart._

_So maybe Hawke did know something about them._

_Justice did not retort then; he leaned away from the desk and pinned Hawke with a waiting look. Hawke coughed slightly into his wrist, smearing a little strip of ink across his face, almost invisible among the thick black beard covering his strong jaws._

_“Have you considered that maybe you are just blocking away the symptoms, not the_ actual _problems? You still forget some,” Hawke continued, brushing a finger across Justice’s – Anders’? – cheek, right below his left eye. Justice let him. “Your eye bags get darker when you don’t sleep enough,” the finger trailed down his face, “your cheekbones have been more profound – not that they don’t look flattering on you – and your body feels colder to the touch,” Hawke flatted his palm on top of Justice’s chest, “and those are just what_ I _can see. So whatever you’re doing? It’s still taking a toll on you, whether you like it or not.”_

_Justice shifted away, “Those are—”_

_“Those are the signs that the body is not taking it well, Justice. You can’t help others if you don’t take care of yourself. I’m not sure what you felt before all this, and Void take me if I know enough about magic to debate the Fade with you, but… We mortals are made of flesh and feelings. We have wants and needs, and sometimes they can’t be separated from one another.”_

_Justice could feel traces of Hawke’s emotions through their touch, if not through the sincerity in the other man’s eyes. This close, he smelled like the pies he brought, all warm and radiating a calming glow even if the little uncertainty was still present. Justice wouldn’t blame Hawke. Their encounters had always been filled with distress, anger and fatal dangers, after all._

_“Very well,” Justice said, and retreated to the back of Anders’ mind._

.

There was no longer anywhere to retreat to. This body was his now—his alone, and he could not lose control over it.

What would he tell Hawke? How would he explain to Hawke that he had failed the one person who mattered to both of them more than their lives? That he lost Anders to a senseless death, that he allowed this injustice to happen right under his watch?

How would he atone for… for this?

 _No,_ Justice reminded himself. He could do this. Nothing felt right, but he had to endure. He still had a purpose. He still was not lost.

_Find Hawke. Save him._

_Then I can face my punishments._

**Author's Note:**

> ... No better time to put in my HC that Justice can feel traces of people's memories and emotions by touching things, more or less similar to how spirits are able to read our mind. The more the emotions adhere to the idea of justice, the more strongly he feels them, but it doesn't mean that he is insensitive to all other feelings. Justice himself feels many things, after all!
> 
> Thank you all for reading, and for the kudos & comments!


End file.
